


maybe later

by erebones



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24901213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: Is it later, yet?
Relationships: Fjord/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 16
Kudos: 135





	maybe later

**Author's Note:**

> ngl i'm not up on current Lore or literally anything post Forge but i found this and it was mostly done so i clipped the porny direction it was going and called it good. i think the title is a reference to something caleb ? said at one point but it's been a while so who knows anymore. 
> 
> for bre <3

Caleb is drunk. He hasn’t been so drunk since Hupperdook, he thinks, a lifetime ago. Two entire bloody _continents_ ago. But if he thinks too hard about Hupperdook he’ll just think of Kiri, and war machines, and can’t think about that now. Doesn’t want to. 

“Easy, now. Almost to the top.”

The voice in his ear is gentle, quiet, like rolling naked on crushed velvet. A tingle works its way down his spine despite his stupor and mellows warmly in his pelvis. He shivers; tries to drag his head from Fjord’s shoulder, but he can’t. He’s so _heavy_. And Fjord’s arm around him is so sturdy, so warm, so… so…

“ _Varten_ ,” Caleb says, and hiccups. “A moment—”

Fjord stops obediently at the top of the stairs. There’s very little light here, the walls and ceiling close around them, but Caleb can still make out the patient humor on his face, illuminated in the firelight filtering up the stairs from the common area. 

“Are you going to be sick?” Fjord wants to know. He sounds incredibly unconcerned about the possibility. 

“Perhaps,” Caleb admits. 

“If you can wait ’til we get to our room I can do something about that.”

Caleb focuses on his breathing, like Beau does on those rare occasions when she can bring herself to meditate. “You’re not going to-- _hic_ \--try to give me a healing potion, are you? Those are… hmm… valuable.”

“Not a healing potion,” Fjord promises. He’s just standing there, waiting for Caleb to get his feet and his stomach under him. When Caleb leans harder against his side, he steadies him like a tree. A _bulwark_. Caleb smiles, pleased with himself for remembering the word. “Something Caduceus taught me last night.”

Caleb’s eyebrows shoot skyward. “O _oooh_ I see. It’s _that_ sort of cure-all.”

Fjord snorts. Not derisively, not shy, just quietly amused. “Not exactly what I had in mind, but.” He trails off.

“ _But_?” Caleb echoes, fascinated by this turn of events. He tries to look up at Fjord without lifting his head from the half-orc’s shoulder, but at this angle the shadows are too deep for his weak human eyes to penetrate. 

“Maybe later,” Fjord mutters, and gives Caleb’s back a quick pat. “Come on, let’s get you feeling better.”

Buffeted by the winds of Fjord’s good-natured guidance, Caleb follows along to the small room at the end of the hall. The girls are up another level, and Caduceus across the way; the inn is laid out very strangely, being built to accommodate folks of all sorts of proportions, but as usual the Nein have shrugged and made themselves at home. 

Fjord unlocks and opens the door deftly, one-handed--the other hand still firmly settled around Caleb’s waist--and guides them both inside. The room is dark but he leads Caleb to the bed unerringly and sits him down on the edge of it before kneeling at his feet. 

“Why, Fjord,” Caleb begins, and then stops, unsure. In the pale starlight streaming in from the window, refracted by the thin layer of snow that had fallen during the day, Fjord’s face is open and sincere, eyebrows lifted slightly as he waits for whatever Caleb is going to say next. Caleb himself isn’t sure. He’d been about to say something, he knows, but some mental hiccup has plucked it straight out of his head. 

“Give me your hand,” Fjord says gently. 

Caleb presses the knuckles of his right hand into Fjord’s palm, clumsy. “What… what are you going to do?”

“Watch,” Fjord murmurs, looking up at him through his eyelashes, “very carefully.”

Caleb holds his breath and he doesn’t know why. Fjord’s new ( _old?_ ) voice, though soft, has him spellbound, an incantation trapped between two sheets of paper. It’s still _him_ , of course, a slight salty burr in the back of his throat that Caleb would recognize anywhere. But this voice, this accent, seems to draw a different facet out of Fjord. A different gleam of light reflected in his crystalline depths. An earnestness, a forthright confidence that Fjord has never worn before. Caleb had always thought of Fjord as confident, as… as _leaderly_. But now, seeing _this_ Fjord in front of him, he knows what real confidence looks like on Fjord’s shoulders. 

Caleb is so caught up in thinking about it that he almost misses the way Fjord tenderly folds Caleb’s hand between his own; the way his golden eyes mist over a paler, whiter yellow and seem to glow. There’s a warm draught of air that smells of wildflowers and warm, sun-baked sand, and Caleb suddenly _feels_ the intoxication being drawn out of him. It’s a very odd feeling--would be uncomfortable, maybe, were it anyone else--but he clings to the weathered strength of Fjord’s hands and breathes through it, and when he opens his eyes his mind is clear.

“How’s that?” Fjord asks. Caleb licks his lips. 

“My mouth is very dry,” he says, to buy some time. He thinks back to five minutes ago, to leaning hard against Fjord’s side with a hand on his knee at the bar, and feels his face go hot. _What on earth got into me?_

The answer, of course, is alcohol--alcohol and camaraderie and the sweet addictive rush of Fjord’s voice in his ear. A voice he recognizes, even if he’s not quite used to it yet. He half-remembers, as through a fog, a cry of desperation-- _help me help this man!_ \--and other, quieter slips; Fjord’s voice thick with the grogginess of sleep, Fjord focused and determined and afraid, left alone at the bottom of the sea. 

Oblivious to the cogs churning in Caleb’s brain, Fjord has already moved to the washstand in the corner of the room. He pours a cup of clean water from the pitcher provided and returns to Caleb’s side. “Here, drink up.” His eyes glint cheerfully as he examines the back of his own hand. “Part of me didn’t expect that to work.”

“It was very impressive,” Caleb says. It’s only after he says it that he hears the ringing echo of Fjord’s own earnest commendations in the back of his head. He blushes again, covers it with a sip from the cup in his hand. 

“Nothing compared to your own skill,” Fjord says modestly. He eases down to the mattress at Caleb’s side, slightly closer than propriety might dictate for two men who are no more than friends. “It’s just a small thing, but better than nothing at all.”

“It… certainly helped.” As sobriety shakes the cobwebs from his mind, he feels another flush of embarrassment. “I didn’t intend to get so sloshed. Not sure what came over me.”

“Nothing wrong with relaxing once in a while.” Fjord flashes him a grin full of teeth, not an ounce of shame or reticence in his expression. “But if you’re keen on round two, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. Used the last of my juice on you.”

“No, no… I’ve had my fill I think.” Caleb rubs his mouth with the back of his wrist, licking the taste of beer from the corners with his tongue. Quieter, muffled into his sleeve, he adds, “Made enough of a fool of myself for the evening.”

There’s a gentle touch to the small of his back, suddenly, and despite his clear head, it takes all his willpower not to lean into its warmth. “Hey. Nothing to be ashamed of, yeah? Promise.”

Caleb huffs and drops his hands into his lap, watching his fingers arc and twist together. Fjord still hasn’t taken his hand from his back, and he starts counting in his head, wondering how long it will take before his friend is tired of putting up with his foolishness. “That is. Kind. You are a kind person, Fjord,” he says despite himself. He takes heart in the fact that such a statement would be true regardless of his own feelings, and presses on, “I am proud of you, you know.”

Fjord makes an interested noise in the back of his throat. His thumb slowly strokes up and down the few inches of spine it can reach, and Caleb’s nape grows warm. “I… don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that, but thank you.”

Caleb scoffs. “You know full well what you’ve done. Something I think few other people have.” Courage wells up in him, hot as a brand, and he turns to face Fjord head-on, quavering only slightly when he finds him sitting closer than he’d realized. “You turned aside a _god_ , Fjord. That is no small thing.”

“You made it easy,” Fjord says, soft and warm, eyes like twin candle flames twinkling in the dark. 

“The group, you mean,” Caleb stammers. He can’t look away; he’s not sure if he wants to.

“I meant what I said.” Fjord glances down a moment, freeing him from the spell of his gaze, but then he takes Caleb’s hand like it’s nothing at all, and the pit of Caleb’s stomach swoops like he’s on the verge of jumping off a cliff. “You’re one of the bravest people I know, and you are… so sure of yourself. I envied you for so long, you know? Envied your resolve, your… your certainty.” Fjord’s thumb curls into the tender palm of Caleb’s hand, where an old scar brings a rush of memory and sensation. Fjord glances at him from under his brows, perfectly serious. “I would follow wherever you led, Caleb.”

Caleb chews his lower lip, at a loss for words. He thinks of Dashilla’s lair; of a quiet, private moment in Fjord’s room back in Rosohna. He thinks of half an hour ago, sitting below in the boisterous common room, finding warmth and steadiness in the weight of Fjord’s hand at his shoulder.

“Wherever?” he asks. His heart is pounding in his throat. Fjord’s thumb does another pass, soft and unassuming, and he smiles. 

“Yes.”

Caleb’s chest is so tight he can barely breathe as he leans in and presses his mouth to Fjord’s. It’s like Fjord was waiting for him--any stiffness he carries bleeds away at the welcoming softness of Fjord’s lips, and when Fjord kisses back it’s gentle and easy, echoing the careful weight of his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. Guiding him but not holding him fast. Soothing him, not pushing him away. 

Caleb’s lips part on a gasp and Fjord kisses him again, hungry, a deep ache simmering just beneath the surface. His lips move slowly, methodically, and Caleb feels drunk again with the heat of it, creeping underneath his collar and suffusing his body with warmth and light. 

When they finally part, their lips seperate with a soft, wet sound that goes right to Caleb’s core. Fjord brushes their noses together, teasing. “Told you.”

“Told me what?” Caleb croaks. That _damned_ voice will be the death of him. 

“That I would follow where you led.” Fjord slides his hand along Caleb’s shoulder to his neck and pulls his fingers gently through the hair at his nape. Caleb swallows a groan. 

“The feeling is mutual,” he whispers. 

Fjord nuzzles along the stubbled slope of his jaw and he is in freefall, the wind whipping past him as Fjord tightens his grip on his hair ever so slightly and kisses the tender skin of his throat. He fumbles for something, anything, to hold onto; finds the thick embroidery of Fjord’s tunic, fingers tangling in the laces. He feels Fjord smile--the curve of his mouth, the hot exhale--and gentle teeth score the base of his throat, followed by a scarred mouth and the intoxicating bite of a suckling kiss, the kind of kiss that leaves red marks behind. Caleb shudders all over and lets out a mewl.

“Easy,” Fjord murmurs as he withdraws, hand loosening in Caleb’s hair. “Your collar will cover it.”

Caleb can’t help the scoff that bubbles up in him, even as his fingers tangle more securely against the breadth of Fjord’s chest. “I don’t care about that.”

“No?” He seems surprised, but there’s a delighted glint in his fond, kiss-bruised smile. Caleb _aches_. 

“No. But I’d rather you were kissing my mouth right now.”

Fjord growls deep in his chest. “That can be arranged.”

But instead of leaning forward and kissing him, as Caleb expects, Fjord takes Caleb’s hands, tenderly unwinding them from his shirt, and kisses his fingers before standing from the bed. With perfunctory, self-assured movements, he sheds his boots and outer tunic, leaving him barefoot, shirt still tucked in but open nearly to the waist. Caleb’s eyes drop of their own accord to the bulge in Fjord’s leggings and heat blooms under his skin like wildfire. “I…”

“Just getting comfortable,” Fjord says easily, pacing back to the edge of the bed. He cups Caleb’s face in his hands as easy as anything and bends down to kiss him, slow and sweet. 

Caleb kisses back eagerly, hands finding Fjord’s waist and creeping up to fiddle with the plackets of his shirt. The skin beneath is warm and smooth, flecked with hair that clusters darker toward the center of his chest and down in a subtle stripe to the hollow of his navel; Caleb wants to follow it with his fingers. His mouth. Instead he kisses Fjord with building desperation, and hopes Fjord can read his thoughts in the heat of his lips. 

“Do you want—” Fjord begins, mumbling against his mouth. Caleb is already nodding. 

“Get on the bed,” he whispers, his voice worn down to the rasp of wind through dry grass. Gratification and pride swell in his breast as Fjord obeys without hesitation, crawling onto the bed and flopping half-propped up against the pillows. His eyes glint sharply gold in their dark scleras, and Caleb follows the rapid rise and fall of his chest with his eyes. Fjord grins at him, somehow shy and cocksure at the same time. 

“Like this?” He curls a fist in the soft fabric of his leggings over his thigh, stretching the material over his erection. Caleb shudders with want and hastily begins shrugging out of his clothes. Coat, buckles, tunic, boots--why does he have so many _layers_? Fjord laughs at him, softly, and the skin at his nape prickles nicely. 

“You’re a flirt,” Caleb accuses without heat, finally kneeling up on the mattress. He scoots forward until he’s close enough and then he slings one leg over, then the other, straddling Fjord’s sturdy hips. He drags an open palm along Fjord’s bare chest and up to curl around the base of his throat. Fjord tips his head back lazily and swallows, thumbs finding the tuck of Caleb’s shirt in his trousers. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Don’t think I ever felt comfortable enough, before.” Fjord’s heated look mellows slightly, turns introspective even as the prick of his claws drags slow, maddening spirals over Caleb’s belly and flanks over his clothes. “But you…” His eyes drop to Caleb’s lips. 

“Me?” He leans forward and presses a delicate kiss to the bow of Fjord’s collarbone, licking softly at the gathered rime of sweat. Fjord shivers beneath him. 

“You… I…” Fjord gives a wrung-out laugh and sits forward suddenly, arms wrapping Caleb up snugly against his front. He buries his face in the crook of Caleb’s neck and nibbles a soft, toothy kiss there, just to the side of the mark he left before. “I’ve always found you… handsome. Surely that doesn’t come as a surprise?”

Caleb doesn’t quite know how to answer that. Perhaps there’s still a piece of him that knows, objectively, that he has physical qualities that some people--many people, even--find attractive. But it’s been so long, years and years, since he’s had any inclination to act on that knowledge, let alone _enjoy_ it, and there’s a swoop of sudden nerves in his belly as he realizes there’s a gulf of ignorance and inexperience in his history that most would find… unappealing. 

But Fjord, if he notices Caleb’s hesitation, doesn’t draw attention to it. He layers another gentle kiss to Caleb’s jaw and strokes his back, and Caleb can’t help falling into him, shaking off the heavy cloak of doubt. 

“And now?” he asks, cupping Fjord’s cheek in one hand. Fjord blinks, and the sweep of his sooty lashes is the sweetest thing Caleb has ever seen. 

“Now I… well. Gods, it sounds foolish to say it out loud.” Fjord’s nose wrinkles but he accepts the brief kiss Caleb drops to the arch of his brow. “Vandran was a… a ladies’ man, shall we say. So of course I felt like _I_ should be, but whenever I tried it was… it didn’t sit right in my skin.”

Caleb’s lips purse with disapproval. “I am beginning to dislike this Vandran.”

“I admit my own feelings on the matter are… complicated. But.” Fjord huffs and rests his forehead against Caleb’s. “If we keep talking about him I fear the mood is going to be well and truly ruined.”

Caleb laughs gently and combs his fingers through Fjord’s hair, the longer, coarser strands on time, peppered with silver and grey. Fjord practically purrs beneath his hands, and Caleb can feel the flush of heat rising eagerly beneath his skin. “Nothing is ruined,” he whispers gently, and kisses him. 

Fjord sighs and kisses back, plucking slowly at his shirt until it comes untucked and he can ruck his hands beneath it, following the curve of Caleb’s spine. His palms are warm, his kisses rough-edged but sweet.

Caleb supposes it’s _later_ , now. 


End file.
